Sudan has for several years been a front line battlefield in the slow-burn conflict between Israel and Iran.

And although the Jerusalem government as usual refuses to confirm or deny its involvement, the attack in the early hours of Wednesday morning that destroyed a complex of arms factories at Yamouk in Sudan’s capital Khartoum has the hallmarks of an Israeli operation.

This attack did not happen in isolation, but came at a particularly sensitive time in a region that is always poised for a new outbreak of violence.

There are fears the civil war in Syria may spill over into Lebanon. On Wednesday, Hamas fighters in Gaza broke months of relative calm and fired about 80 rockets into southern Israel, but doing little damage. Israel responded with four air strikes that killed three known fighters.

This flurry of attacks by Hamas appears to have been a burst of bravado prompted by a visit to the territory of Qatar’s king Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani.

What was significant, however, is that the new Egyptian government of President Mohamed Morsi put pressure on Hamas to stop the violence and has cracked down on smuggling of weapons to the group across Egypt’s Sinai Peninsular.

Egypt’s ousted president Hosni Mubarak was active in reining in Hamas. But Morsi comes from the same Muslim puritanical group as Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and there had been little faith in Israel that he would play a similar role as Mubarak.

But behind these events is the backdrop in the Middle East of the desire by the religious leaders in Iran from the Shiite sect of Islam to supersede the Saudi Arabian Sunni sect monarchy as the region’s dominating political, ideological and military force.

Iran’s attacks on Israel are a way Tehran tries to burnish its Islamist credentials in the Middle East.

And along with the terrorist groups Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Tehran government has found Sudan’s outlaw President Omar al-Bashir a willing proxy in this campaign.

Al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide against his own people in Sudan’s northwest region of Darfur, has been happy to provide factories and smuggling routes to supply arms to Hamas in Gaza.

But there is now some speculation in the region that increased international pressure on Iran to halt its nuclear development program and the possibility of attacks against those facilities by Israel or the United States or both has prompted Tehran to make Sudan a base for retaliation.

Reports in Arab media say the some if not all the factories in the Yamouk complex have been built and run by Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard. There are also reports in Israel that the Iranians and Sudan recently started manufacturing Shebab surface-to-surface ballistic missiles at Yamouk.

Shebab missiles have a range of about 2,000 kilometre, putting Israel within range from Sudan.

But it seems unlikely that Tehran would imagine it could get away with making Sudan an outpost of Iranian defence.

Israel has been aware for years of al-Bashir’s work for Tehran and has already launched several attacks against threatening targets in Sudan.

In January and February 2009, Israeli warplanes attacked convoys of trucks in Sudan. They were believed to be carrying Fajr-3 rockets which have a range of about 70 kilometres and which were being supplied by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to Hamas.

The intention, according to defence correspondents in the Israeli media, was to ship the missiles from Port Sudan from where smugglers would ship them to the Sinai Peninsular in Egypt and then take them to Hamas in Gaza through the numerous tunnels under the border.

In April last year, Israeli helicopters attacked a four-by-four vehicle in Port Sudan, killing or wounding one of the occupants, Abdul-Latif Ashkar.

Ashkar was Hamas’ man in charge of planning and co-ordinating the shipment of Iranian weapons to Gaza through Sudan. He was the successor of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, the Hamas official assassinated in a Dubai hotel room in January 2010 in a major operation by Israel’s Mossad spy agency.

There have also been reports of Israeli aircraft attacking weapons convoys in Sudan bound for Gaza late last year and in May this year.

Eye witnesses in Khartoum say four warplanes flew in from the Red Sea and attacked the Yamouk complex early Wednesday morning.

Radar at Khartoum’s airport is reported to have been jammed and telecommunications in the capital knocked out while the raid was on. According to Sudanese government officials, about 60 per cent of the buildings were destroyed in a series of massive explosions and two people were killed.

A senior Sudanese army officer is reported on local websites to have been arrested on suspicion of aiding the Israelis.

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